London Courtyard Garden
So, you find your dream house; great location, right number of bedrooms, ideal amount of character but there’s a compromise and its outdoor space. Or perhaps gardens just aren’t your thing, a big sprawling mass of weeds isn’t your idea of heaven so you opt for a smaller, hard landscaped courtyard. Either way, the house is the main event and you think your 4 x 4 metre courtyard garden is too small to do anything with. For the size, a bit of decking and a table and chairs is about all it can offer, right?
Wrong. With growing urbanisation and an ever-increasing population, garden sizes are on the decrease and whether you have a London flat or country cottage, courtyard gardens are becoming more and more common place. For this reason, outdoor space, however small, will always be at a premium and well-designed outdoor space will always add value (in more ways than one) to your home.
Just think if that outdoor space, were indoor space. You’d be willing to pay tens if not hundreds of thousands more for the same size and chances are you’d be ensuring that it was as well designed and thought out as the rest of your home. So why not the same for your courtyard garden?
There is many a YouTube video advocating the ingenuity of tiny houses. secret storage, multi-purpose furniture and clever décor giving the illusion of space but there are few of these relating to gardens. We’ve written blogs before about the exponential value that garden design can add to your home and the chasm of difference between a London flat with no outdoor space and a London flat with some. Houses are no different. The British have a love and affinity with the outdoors and want a private piece of it as part of their home. And that is exactly what good design will offer.
One of our design projects here at Studio 31, due to be built in 2018 is a London courtyard garden for a beautifully renovated Victorian property in the up and coming borough of Walthamstow.
The clients had designed a Scandinavian influenced interior which was elegant even at the finite detail and they wanted an outdoor space which was an extension of this. With bespoke bi-fold doors allowing the two spaces to be connected as one, there was the potential for a truly transformative space when the garden was in use but also in being viewed from the interior.
The design needed to reflect the simplicity of the client’s thoughtful, minimalistic lifestyle so a paired down palette was used to reflect the Scandinavian feel. All the available space was maximised including making a feature from the boundaries to give the illusion of one whole space from interior to exterior. A sunken snug area rejuvenated the courtyard making it both look and feel bigger. Creating multiple levels within the space also gave the feel of outdoor “rooms” and therefore transformed the way the space could be used as well as increased its capacity as an entertaining space. It was important that every aspect of the garden flowed on from the house so even the furniture was bespoke designed to mirror the interior space. The resulting design really gives a sense of one whole space or stepping into additional rooms and really creates a sense of tranquillity in a busy urban lifestyle.
A small roof terrace or courtyard garden doesn’t have to mean you are restricted in terms of what your outdoor space can offer, in fact it can mean the opposite. In the same way as architects are considering to a greater and greater extent their buildings in the context of the wider landscape, Landscape Architects are being compelled to think harder about the bond between building and landscape. Small spaces, push designers to think beyond the norm, to explore spaces differently and make their designs not just innovative but put simply, better.
For more information or photos, see our portfolio page here.